The front page of The Verge today

Summary: Bill Gates' $300,000,000 per annum 'investment' in the media is paying off as The Verge too becomes a Microsoft mouthpiece

A COUPLE of years ago one The Verge journalist who had approached me out of the blue conducted a one-hour interview with me about abuses by Bill Gates (specifically the use of his personal money to shamelessly derail GNU/Linux adoption, which had been spread through OLPC), but the piece never saw the light of day, almost as if the piece got spiked by the editor/publisher. As I clarified during the interview, I had already expressed concerns about the founder of The Verge because of his attacks on Android, facilitation/grooming of paid Microsoft lobbyists as "experts" (giving them a platform), etc. There was already some "bad blood" there. Over time, albeit very gradually, The Verge became more of a Microsoft propaganda network and source of Android FUD, as we noted last year on numerous occasions. They have distorted some facts and portrayed Android in a way that Microsoft sought to portray it. It also demonised Google over its role as Android/AOSP patron (more on that in our next post). All in all, we repeatedly urged readers to be wary and sceptical of The Verge.

According to this new analysis from Swapnil Bhartiya (titled "Microsoft’s iOS Outlook app is pure evil; don’t use it"), the Microsoft-friendly The Verge has been advertising Microsoft Outlook (with NSA PRISM, Microsoft being the first PRISM joiner) in quite a shameful fashion, despite Outlook app being horribly dangerous (as we noted yesterday). "A few days ago," wrote Bhartiya, "The Verge wrote an exciting piece about the Outlook app for iOS, which was full or praise. I don’t know how many Gmail users became the Outlook user after reading the post."

We have had our longtime suspicion that The Verge was in Microsoft's pocket (not literally) reaffirmed when we found out last week that Bill Gates is the editor this month. That explains a lot, doesn't it? Yet another publication infiltrated by Microsoft. ⬆

"Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!"

--Microsoft, internal document [PDF]